A longtime Los Angeles police officer and trainer took the stand on Friday, Sept. 30, to testify that the Albuquerque police who were near James Boyd before he was killed were acting professionally.
Keith Sandy fired his rifle first, hitting Boyd in the arms. Dominique Perez fired shortly after, shooting Boyd in the back. Expert witness Ronald McCarthy said the shots Perez fired were not what’s called “sympathetic fire,” basically where one officer instinctively shoots simply because another officer has.
"I don’t see sympathetic fire here," McCarthy said. "If there was sympathetic fire, an 'oh gosh' moment, that would be one round. There wasn’t. Both officers fired three rounds."
Both Perez and Sandy are facing second-degree murder charges. The defense strategy rests on the idea that both officers decided independently and at the same moment to fire at Boyd because they thought he was threatening a K-9 officer.